Effects of Climate Change on the Arctic and Out-of-the-Box Approaches for Dealing with Them
Mark Parrino
Introduction
Human-induced climate change is becoming an increasing threat. The rate of warming in the 21st century is greater than in the second half of the 20th century.i ii iii The most pronounced effects are happening in the Arctic, where the surface air temperature is warming about twice as fast as the global average rate of warming.iv The warming is leading to an increase in global sea level as a result of melting ice sheets and glaciers and through thermal expansion. Warming is also linked to an observed weakening in the zonal component of the jet stream and an increase of severe weather in mid- and high latitudes.v vi Given the urgency of the situation, reducing emissions alone will not be enough to avoid devastating outcomes and so increasing attention is being paid to unusual, out-of-the-box approaches. These less-conventional approaches might include recreating an ecosystem from a previous glacial period to help prevent permafrost melt, adding particles to the atmosphere or bubbles to the oceans to reflect sunlight, or constructing buttresses to delay the collapse of glaciers.
The Current Arctic
In its 2019 Arctic Report Card, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association (NOAA) reported that the surface air temperature north of 60o N for October 2018-August 2019 was the second warmest since 1900. Furthermore, the air in the Arctic continued to warm at a rate double the global average rate of warming. Sea ice is younger, thinner, and covers less of the Arctic Ocean than in the past – the most recent 13 years represent the 13 lowest extents of summertime minimum sea ice in the satellite record that goes back almost 50 years. The amplified atmospheric warming also is driving more rapid rates of decline in snow cover, melting of the Greenland ice sheet, increased summer Arctic river discharge, and northward movement of Arctic vegetation zones.vii
Other studies have reported similarly concerning findings. Analyses by the National Snow and Ice Data Center reveal that summer melting of Arctic sea ice and the Greenland ice sheet in 2019 was the second most extensive in the satellite record (due to the variability of the weather, the greatest amount of melting to date occurred in 2012).viii A significant contributor to 2019’s melting was warm air from the heat wave that also covered Europe in late July. During a five- day period, melting occurred over 90% of the ice sheet’s surface area, resulting in 55 billion metric tons of runoff, 40 billion metric tons more than the 1981 to 2100 average.ix A recent study published in Nature found that receding glaciers in the Canadian Arctic are exposing landscapes that have been continuously frozen for at least 40,000 years.x Another report reveals that Greenland’s ice loss is tracking the IPCC’s high-end climate warming scenario, meaning that its ice loss will contribute to about seven centimeters of warming which will affect around 40 million people in coastal areas.xi
Arctic warming is expected to continue to increase, continuing to occur at roughly twice the global-average rate of warming. This Arctic Amplification (AA) of the temperature change is a main contributor to the rapid rates of change observed in the Arctic. AA occurs mainly because of an albedo effect. Snow is the most highly reflective type of surface cover, and when the snow melts, exposing the ice or ground surface, the reflectivity is reduced and a larger fraction of incoming solar radiation is absorbed, creating a positive feedback loop that leads to the additional absorption of solar leading to greater melting.
Large amounts of carbon stored in the permafrost of the tundra contribute to another positive feedback. Research highlighted in the 2019 Arctic Report Card indicates that about twice as much organic carbon is stored in northern permafrost soils as is currently contained in the atmosphere.xii As warming occurs, there is faster thawing of permafrost; this exposes greater amounts of frozen material to the atmosphere, leading to release of greater amounts of CO2, and perhaps even CH4, into the atmosphere. The resulting increases in the atmospheric concentrations of these greenhouse gases leads in turn to increased rates of heating and thawing of the permafrost as part of a positive feedback process that will lead to further releases of CO2 and CH4.
Impacts of Arctic Change
The warming temperatures and changing climate of the Arctic have already begun to have noticeable effects, not only in the region, but also affecting the entire world. Mechanisms through which global effects occur include contributions to rising global sea level, making the mid-latitude jet stream wavier, increasing the frequency of severe winter weather in mid- latitudes, and more. Global sea level has risen 8-9 inches (21-24 centimeters) since 1880, with almost half of that amount occurring since 1993. xiii xiv A recent study estimates that roughly a third of the water contributing to sea level rise originated in the Arctic, with Greenland and Alaska being the two largest contributors in the Arctic region.xv xvi Relative to the year 2000, the 2018 National Climate Assessment cited a study projecting that global average sea level would be roughly 0.3-0.6 feet (9-18 cm) above its preindustrial level by 2030, 0.5-1.2 feet (15-38 cm) by 2050, and 1-4 feet (30-130 cm) by 2100. A report by Climate Central lists the top 25 cities in the US that are endangered by sea level rise, with New York City and Miami taking the top two places on the list.xvii
Another effect of Arctic warming has been its effect on the polar jet stream that carries storms around the mid-latitudes. The jet stream is essentially a river of wind high in the atmosphere that, although it generally flows west to east, is a component of the atmospheric circulation that transports very large amounts of absorbed solar energy from the equator to the poles, where it is radiated back out to space. The jet stream arises as a result of a combination of the spherical shape of the Earth, the latitudinal gradients in incoming solar radiation and temperature that exist between Earth’s mid and high latitudes, and the spin of the Earth. Because the Arctic is warming much faster than lower latitudes, the reduction in the temperature gradient is allowing greater meandering of the jet stream.xviii As a result of the increased waviness of and the slower west to east shifting of the waves in the jet stream, the frequency and intensity of severe mid-latitude winter weather episodes are increasing.xix
Out-of-the-box Approaches
Given the increasing disruptions caused by ongoing climate change, in addition to reducing emissions and other more conventional methods of mitigation, which are absolutely critical (and not discussed further in this note), increasing attention is being paid to out-of-the box approaches that might also be needed to moderate the increasing warming. As just a couple of examples, the following approaches have been suggested as ways to moderate specific arctic impacts such as ice melt and amplified surface warming. If successfully implemented, these approaches would have the potential to moderate the impacts of climate change in the Arctic and help slow global change as well.
Glacial Geoengineering:
In March 2018, John Moore, head of China’s geoengineering research program and chief scientist at Beijing Normal University’s College of Global Change and Earth System Science, published an article in Nature describing three potential geoengineering techniques that might be implemented locally to slow glacier melt and global sea level rise.xx
I. Sea walls: To block warm water that is flowing from the Atlantic through the Labrador Sea and then accelerating sub-surface melting of the Jakobshavn glacier in Greenland, construction of a 100-meter-high wall across the fjord in front of the glacier by dredging gravel and sand from Greenland’s continental shelf has been suggested. The scale of the wall would be comparable to other large civil-engineering projects, requiring movement of about a tenth of the material that was excavated to construct the Suez Canal. Although the project would create jobs, albeit in a remote area of Greenland, outside experts would have to be brought in to supplement local workers and it would need to be recognized that local ecosystems would be affected. II. Underwater buttresses: When ice sheets reach the sea, the ice tends to spread out to form an ice shelf. Shelves have been thinning as a result of rising ocean temperatures, leading to more frequent breaking off of ice bergs and acceleration of loss of glacial ice mass. A number of large buttresses could conceivably be built to support the ice shelves and prevent them from crumbling. Although this approach could, in theory, help, more testing, modeling, and feasibility trials would be needed before action could be contemplated, especially given the scale of effort that would be required. III. Dry subglacial streams: Ice is constantly moving and flowing. The friction between the moving ice and the glacier bed creates heat, which stimulates more melting, basically better lubricating the ice stream movement. This lubricating water at the ice- ground interface could either be pumped directly to the ocean or frozen in place using cooled brines beneath the sediment at the glacier’s base.
Block Arctic Passages:
Stanford lecturer Dr. Leslie Field has proposed another approach to slowing Arctic warming. It involves creating large ice masses to block strategically located water passages by placing glass microspheres that would reflect sunlight back to space in specific areas. As ice melts, the surface of the Arctic reflects less solar radiation, leading to greater absorption of sunlight and so hastening the warming process. By strategically placing specially engineered microbubbles around the Arctic in several bottleneck locations, Dr. Field suggests that loss of Arctic sea ice could be reduced, thus slowing warming while the global effort to reduce global emissions accelerates.
Dr. Field proposes to make the microspheres out of silica, a compound made up of silicon and oxygen, two of Earth’s most abundant materials. Due to their abundance in nature, it is unlikely that localized deployment of the compound would upset local ecosystems. The challenge is to determine the optimal locations in the Arctic where the smallest possible intervention would have the largest impact.xxi While the idea shows promise on the very local scale, it is not clear that the approach will be sufficiently scalable to produce a noticeable impact.
Pleistocene Park:
In Arctic Siberia, Russian scientists Sergey and Nikita Zimov are trying to slow permafrost melt by turning Siberian tundra into grassland. Their plan, called Pleistocene Park, is modeled after cold conditions during the geological epoch that spanned from 2.6 million years ago to 12,000 years ago. They are attempting to recreate the most extensive biome of that time, called Mammoth Steppe.
Here is how the science is proposed to work: Dr. Zimov has already begun reintroducing animals such as bison, moose, and yaks to the environment, the intent being that their eating habits would lead to a replacement of the region’s dark trees and shrubs with grasslands. The altered landscape would reflect more sunlight in summer, tending to make the region cooler. During the winter months, the short grass would provide less insulation than the existing tree and shrub cover, so each season’s freeze would presumably reach deeper into the ground, counter-balancing the GHG-induced permafrost thawing influence. Such an effort could be important because thawing permafrost leads to release of stored carbon to the air as carbon dioxide or methane, emission of which is not yet accounted for in the most recent IPCC assessments and could be an explanation for why warming is occurring somewhat more rapidly than most climate models are estimating.xxii
There is also a plan to re-establish the now-extinct wooly mammoths and insert them into Pleistocene Park. The mammoths would be especially effective in clearing the trees that would otherwise take over the grassland. Since 2014, Harvard gene-scientist George Church has been using CRISPR to swap normal elephant genes with mammoth genes and estimates that as few as 50 would have to be switched to create the sort of creature Dr. Zimov imagines for his plan. Independent of Dr. Church’s work, a team of Japanese, Russian, and American scientists headed by Akira Iritani of Kyoto University plans to insert a DNA from a mammoth carcass into the egg of an African elephant in order to produce a baby mammoth.xxiii
Dr. Zimov argues that their plan to bring back animals to a habitat where they once flourished poses no risk to local ecosystems or the humans that live nearby. While the proposed intervention would need to be very large in scale, it started back in 1996 and has already spread beyond its original boundaries. Though questions remain about the viability and effectiveness of such an undertaking, that top scientists are going to such extreme lengths does tend to reinforce indications of the seriousness of which they are viewing climate change.xxiv
Sea Ice Thickening:
To directly counter the increasing ice melt in the Arctic, researchers from Arizona State University have proposed an approach for artificially thickening the sea ice to stave off some of the effects being caused by reduced and thinning sea ice cover. The plan calls for construction and placement of a very large number of wind turbines across the Arctic Ocean. The generated electricity would be used to pump water from below the sea ice and spray it over the top of the sea ice, much as is done for making snow in ski areas. The expected effect would be to thicken the sea ice by adding a high albedo snow cover on top, the high albedo of which would help slow springtime melting. The scientists estimate that thickening the sea ice over the entire Arctic Ocean by just one meter would have the same effect on the region’s albedo as turning the clock back 17 years. In order to achieve this goal, however, a mobilization effort would be required similar to the scale of the Manhattan project, commandeering use of order 13% of current U.S. steel production each year if this approach were to actually be deployed.xxv
Solar Geoengineering:
Although not directly focused on the Arctic, solar geoengineering brought the concept of geoengineering into mainstream scientific discussion about what could be done to moderate global warming. Solar geoengineering is an umbrella term that encompasses ideas of seeding the atmosphere with reflective particles to reflect a small fraction (around 1-2%) of the sun’s rays before they are absorbed by the troposphere and the Earth’s surface. The 1991 volcanic eruption of Mt. Pinatubo provides a natural analog of the approach. The reflective particles formed in the atmosphere from particles emitted by the eruption are credited with cooling the planet about 0.5 degrees Celsius for 15 months after the eruption.xxvi Several solar geoengineering ideas exist, from large scale planet-wide injection plans to focusing attention of countering warming affecting more localized situations. Localized insertion of aerosols over the Arctic is one way in which solar geoengineering could be undertaken at a smaller scale.
Solar geoengineering has been a topic of increasing debate in recent years. One cost analysis suggests that a massive program would cost as little as $2.25 billion to implement. While actually increasing backscatter so that 1-2% of incoming solar radiation is reflected back to space may be possible, a number of objections have been raised as the idea is being researched; these include moral hazard, uncertainty about the future, and governance issues. Arguments for and against proceeding with solar engineering can be summarized roughly as follows.xxvii
Arguments in favor of proceeding with solar geoengineering: 1. The world is not close to reaching the mitigation targets that have been set (e.g., in the Paris Accord) and the projected warming that would result would cause very significant consequences. 2. The mitigation targets themselves are optimistic because emissions are rising faster than was projected a decade ago (i.e., global emissions are quite closely following RCP 8.5, the worst-case RCP). 3. Mitigation activities will inadvertently exacerbate near-term warming by also reducing emissions of SO2, the precursor of sulfate particles, when coal-fired combustion as a source of electricity is reduced. 4. By offsetting warming, solar geoengineering will buy time to reduce carbon dioxide emissions. 5. Solar engineering is likely to be much less costly than adaptation and mitigation, which will get more and more difficult and expensive once early reductions and protections are achieved (techniques such as erecting massive sea walls, pumping water to drought- afflicted areas, and even reducing emissions from long-distance aircraft are expected to all cost significantly more than solar engineering). 6. There is commercial potential in development, construction, and operation of the technologies.
Argument against solar geoengineering: 1. Moral hazard: Geoengineering is not sufficiently effective to replace mitigation efforts such as reduction of emissions, but if geoengineering is widely implemented and even partially successful, people could lose sight of the larger actions necessary to protect the planet. 2. Hubris: There is concern over the audacity of humans to believe that they know enough about the Earth system to think that their intentional actions and injections would be successful and that the planet would not experience unintended consequences. 3. Bounce-back effect: Once the injections and interventions begin, there is concern that, should they ever stop, even faster warming than we are currently experiencing would occur, with even greater consequences than if slower warming had continued to occur as a result of no intervention having been taken in the first place. 4. Limited effects: Climate intervention is primarily a temperature-based solution. Solar geoengineering would not fix other problems associated with rising emissions such as ocean acidification. It is merely meant to limit the severest impacts of climate change while emissions are curbed and carbon dioxide removal approaches are built up sufficiently to be pulling the CO2 concentration back down. 5. Low cost: The low cost of a massive scale implementation could lead to rogue actions by individuals or small countries to try to reduce impacts on them without proper consultation with the rest of the world or with the effects the intervention might have on them. For example, actions intended to cool the climate might also suppress the monsoons that are vital to survival of other nations. 6. Governance: There is no international body or group responsible for overseeing geoengineering projects that would be exerting global effects, and no system for determining how much solar engineering would best be done. Also, there is no system for determining damages, liability and payments, if appropriate, for damages done by geoengineering projects gone awry or resulting unintentionally.
Conclusion
The Earth, and specifically the Arctic, is experiencing increasingly rapid climate change. It is clear that the world’s current mitigation efforts will not keep the increase in the Earth’s global average temperature below two degrees Celsius, which is a level that would lead to a wide array of consequences. While many of the ideas above may seem extreme at this time, they are the type of innovative approaches that may well soon be needed to curb anthropogenic climate change. The best way to actually test most of these ideas, particularly the geoengineering projects, would be to start with small scale interventions and then studying how the Earth is being affected. Research needs to start now to ensure that humans have enough time to slow the effects of climate change in the Arctic before they become irreversible.
Source: https://nca2014.globalchange.gov/report/our-changing- climate/melting-ice/graphics/projected-arctic-sea-ice-decline
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